Splintering Cities examines the logics and motivations behind elite urban withdrawal,
dispossession and urban regeneration projects occurring in the Southern city. The section aims to
explore the perceived splintering of the urban ‘public’ – into fractured spaces of the
slum, gated community, highway, airport etc. The section further examines the manner in which
both overt mobilisations of “security”/ “risk”, and everyday urban conflicts between competing
identities/groups enforce a defacto splintering between and within an urban elite and subaltern.

One year ago last
month, part of a Delhi slum was demolished; the demolition received almost no
public attention. As politicians across India are speaking to the urban poor,
asking for their votes and promising them secure housing, it is important to
recall these events and the official attitude they represent.

As Cities in Conflict goes on hiatus, I take a look back at the past fourteen months of publishing articles, film, photo-essays, mappings and infographics on the series, and comment on where urbanism is today: stuck between logics of saviourism and withdrawal.

While debates on sexual violence in India focus on the city, the experiences of women expunged to the city's fraught, anonymous margins are all too often excluded. Content warning: this article contains description
of rape and sexual violence.

The proliferation of 'smart' solutions to a deluge of political and economic problems in today's cities may well serve to reinforce urban inequality at a time when new radical alternatives are in desperate need.

For more than six months, a small group of young, homeless
mothers have been battling for decent and secure social housing for
everyone. The mothers highlight an emerging problem facing thousands across the country: it's getting very hard
to find a place to live. Today the women will hand in their
petition to City Hall.

The Gezi park protests of June 2013 drew the attention of the world to a very urban conflict in Turkey's most populous city. Less covered, were the various micro-conflicts behind the scenes which led to eruption at Gezi.

In the face of rapid urban expansion and environmental degradation, the people of Usme, a periurban town of Bogotá, have mobilised to protect the local environment and strengthen community autonomy over the neighbourhood.

Watch: A short film exploring Mumbai's urban renewal as seen from Byculla, a multicultural inner-city neighbourhood symbolically and physically bypassed by road infastructure projects in Mumbai's race for global city status (13 mins).

Rather than submit to the noxious dynamics of Spain’s colossal
underground economy, the migrant workers of Mount Zion built an informal
city in the backdrop of 'brand' Barcelona. On the 24th July the
community was forcibly evicted and a humanitarian crisis was born.

While the recent protests in São Paulo are made up of a cross-section of
Paulite society 'waking up' to social injustice, it is young
people from the urban periphery, those which have 'never slept' who dominate the demonstrations, demanding access, freedom and a new kind of urban living.

Despite the recent crackdown on squatting in the UK and Europe, across the Global North we are now witnessing the slow emergence of an alternative politics of housing that seeks to challenge the pieties of neoliberal restructuring, and re-think ways of inhabiting cities.

Since 2000, activist groups across India have sought to defend slum communities from dispossession in favour of 'participatory' resettlement on the urban periphery. The popularity of such reasoning has lead to the myth that squatters prefer resettlement to illegality, denying squatters a right to remain and masking the real, everyday exclusions in the lives of the resettled.

The unprecedented series of mega-events which are set to take place across Brazil in the coming years have lead to heightened security in host cities – a gold mine for the global private
defence industry.

The ‘Mumbai model’ of public-private partnerships in urban land and housing development is being adopted and piloted across India, and the world. So why has the ‘Mumbai model’ in Golibar provoked such outrage?

From April 2013 major
changes to benefit provision in Britain will likely change both the social and spatial make-up of our cities. The squeezing out of poorer residents from London and elsewhere, raises an important question: exactly who has the ‘right’ to the city in contemporary Britain?

Recent spikes in homicides across São Paulo challenge the city's reputation as a darling of public security and underscores the pervasive control criminal gangs like the Primeiro Comando da Capital have on the everyday security of city-residents.

While previous 'security planning' in Bogotá has been premised on eviction and demolition, emerging redevelopment frameworks are geared toward a far more pervasive practice of urban renovation; the re-peopling of problem areas in the city.

Ten young hip-hop activists have been murdered in Medellín's Comuna 13 district since 2009. Such violence against young hip-hoppers demonstrates the lingering contradictions of urban security still present in Colombia's 'miracle' city.

Bogotá's lauded transition from chaotic city of crime and violence to cosmopolitan hub of commerce and creativity belies the manner in which 'security' has been differentially mobilized over the past fifteen years, to stigmatise and displace the city's most vulnerable residents.

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We are currently seeking short submissions on urban everyday life, change, renewal or conflict in your city. If interested please send in a photograph with a short 200 word description. tom.cowan[at]opendemocracy.net